Lisabob

Thanks for the ideas. Ed, I'm not sure the problem is too much training. In fact that is one of the things that steams me about this particular session. The last time it was offered was in October. The next time it will be offered is next October. So I've been waiting a LONG TIME to get this training and it wasn't what it was advertized to be. I do think the online idea is a good one. But I think I like the sound of the way TCC is delivered elsewhere - to the actual committee. I will follow up on this and see if I can lay my hands on the syllabus. I'm not holding my breath though because the guy who is the district training coordinator is the same guy who actively discouraged me from signing up for woodbadge a couple of years back (21st C., not the previous course) due to my gender and my role (at the time) as a cub leader. Lisa'bob

Our troop has had a bugler for the last several years. He plays at every troop meeting. It helped that we had an adult who is a spectacular musician and bugler himself. But it is pretty cool to hear these guys improve as the year goes on, and it is a sought-after position among the trumpeters in the troop. In fact my son, who is a trombone player for now, wants to start learning trumpet so that some day he can become the bugler. Lisa'bob

EagleinKY, Yes, that sort of thing seems pretty reasonable and could be clearly understood as "service." What our CO has asked us to do in the past is to actually do a fundraiser and give them the money. Like, stand in front of grocery stores and solicit money on their behalf. Another example, the packs in our town tried to organize a joint benefit effort for tsunami victims a little over a year ago, with the idea that we'd donate all proceeds to the Red Cross. Can we do that? Previously we'd been told no by council professionals, this weekend we were told yes by (other) council professionals. Lisa'bob

I find it interesting to see how people respond to ideas or world views that they disagree with. For example, by equating a couple of comedians/magicians with Osama bin Laden. I've never seen Penn & Teller, never heard of them before. I almost certainly won't be watching them. If I did I might or might not find them and their show about scouting amusing, I don't know. If I found them offensive (or not, for that matter) I might respond either here or in some other venue. But comparing them to a known terrorist who helped kill thousands of innocent people? C'mon, we can do better than that. Lisa'bob

Cograts Kristy! Always glad to hear about another bird get their beads. Lisa'bob I used to be a Bobwhite, a good old Bobwhite too!

I went to what can loosely be termed "training" this weekend. One thing that we discussed was fundraising, and specifically, the types of fundraising that are typically not acceptable. Our chartered org. has been asking us to conduct a fundraiser for them (they're a well-known service club) and as a committee we've checked with council before to see whether that was acceptable. We've always been told NO. We've been told that we can't fund-raise for any outside organization no matter how worthy, including the Red Cross. We've been told that if we want to fund raise for relief efforts or humanitarian causes, we should donate to the World Organization of Scouting or nationally-organized and recognized BSA efforts. At the training, a District Director said that this interpretation was incorrect, that units should be expected to help their charter partner with fundraisers, if asked, and that it is perfectly acceptable for scout units to run fundraisers where the profit will be donated to other non-profit groups, as long as there's no moral objection. (he gave an example of a unit chartered through a Catholic Church fundraising for Planned Parenthood as a bad idea in terms of moral objections). This puts our unit in a position to re-evaluate our decision to offer service, but not fundraising help, to our charter partner. But I was surprised by the DD's interpretation because it runs counter to what I've always heard before. Can anybody help me sort this out? I'm guessing there's documentation somewhere regarding BSA policy on fundraising for outside groups but I'm not sure where I'd find it. This isn't the same as the rules on the back of the unit money earning form I don't think. Thanks. Lisa'bob

Well I went. I returned. It was not a good experience. It was the kind of training session that makes one want to leave, quite frankly, except that I had already made child care arrangements for the day, paid my $15, and driven an hour to get there. So I stuck it out, thinking all the while, "at least I'll never have to sit through this particular session again." I'm upset about this, really. The poor guy who led the training started right out by telling us that he'd been given less than a week's notice to prepare, hadn't been active in scouting for quite some time, was new to the council, and didn't have the syllabus. Further, he'd been asked to come and "help," not "run" the session and didn't find out UNTIL HE ARRIVED THAT MORNING that he was actually running the show. He did have a great deal of personal experience with scouts, as both a youth member and an adult leader. He then spent the first 90 minutes covering material - at length - that is supposed to be covered in NLE (the organization of scouting, relationship between national, council, district, unit, the mission and aims of scouting, etc.). 2 of the 4 "trainees" had literally just finished sitting through NLE earlier in the morning, and the other two of us - both woodbadgers - have had NLE before too. Thankfully after a short break we were able to steer the session more toward actual committee issues but even then it was not particularly useful because the big issues we wanted to talk about (what does "boy led" really mean in action? how do the committee and SM function together and what are the separate responsibilities of each? discussion of Boards of Review? etc.) were by and large NOT the issues he wanted to talk about. And the training ran WELL OVER the allotted time (was scheduled as a 3 hour training, lasted an extra 75 minutes beyond that!). So while I can't really blame this poor guy who was in a difficult position of presenting a training for which he was unprepared, it was still a large waste of time and money and I'm irritated. This was a combined effort of TWO districts and had been on the calendar and widely promoted for over 6 months! As far as I'm concerned, the districts left this guy out to dry and did no favors to those of us who attended the training, either. Not to mention that for my $15 I don't think I got much of value. Now I guess I could try to make waves and get involved to "fix" this. Heck, my "hour a week" knows no bounds, right? But getting onto our district training committee is just a little short of impossible and besides, I don't think I even want to work with people who are this incapable of organizing events. They'd get annoyed with me real quick because I'd insist on having things well planned in advance. Argh. (thanks for letting me vent) Lisa'bob And by the way: I've learned much more, and been stimulated to think about issues much more, on this forum! So Thanks to all for your participation here.

I don't know that the district itself has actively sought recruits around here. But what I do know works well is a personal request, particularly to people who are already working with kids in some capacity. Teachers, in particular, seem fairly willing, especially when one of "their" kids asks them. Also, recently we've had good luck getting people from the local military reserve units to sign up as MBCs. One guy I can think of, who is ex-Navy, agreed to do the oceanography mb and he is capable of holding the kids spell-bound with real-life experience stories about submarine hunting, which he winds into his mb sessions. It certainly has made this an exciting and sought-after mb for our boys. Lisa'bob

Eamonn, That really sounds like an ideal way to do the committee training and it would certainly help in building a sense of teamwork. But...that's just not the way "they" do it around here. And I think I'm the only one from this troop who will be in attendance for the committee training which is a bit unfortunate (SM/ASM is the same day and location and we've got several people attending that together, but they have separate sessions so I won't be interacting with them at all tomorrow). I'm curious to know, does that mean committees in your area all go through the training together again whenever they get a handful of new members? How do the "seasoned" committee members feel about that? I can easily imagine grumbling on the part of those who have already been through it in the past. Do you wait for a critical mass to develop in terms of new members in need of training, rather than sending new individuals off to training whenever they join and can attend? I can see pro's and con's to both ways I guess. Isn't it interesting to see how other areas approach these same basic functions?? Here's to staying on the good side of all of our "Others Who Must Be Obeyed!" Lisa'bob

Tomorrow's the day. I'm off to do the troop committee challenge. I've been on the troop committee for close to a year now so I'm kind of glad to finally have the opportunity (I couldn't get to the ones in the fall and there weren't any offered around here in the winter). Lisa'bob

Our troop advancement person heads all of this up and makes sure appropriate committee members are available. Our BORs are more or less on demand, usually right before or right after our weekly troop meeting, rather than once a month or something like that. Boys are expected to sign up at least a week in advance so we can be sure to have enough committee members present. But we've done a few on the spot (usually when COH is approaching). Lisa'bob

I agree with some posters' comments that there are times when a boy should not be in scouting. But on the cub end of things in particular I have seen a lot of cases where scouting is the only thing a boy has in his life where he even remotely fits in. Some kids don't fit in at school and aren't good at sports. Others who have behavioral or medical problems tend not to be too welcome in recreational team sports either. For some of these kids, even though they may not be the easiest to work with, scouting is all they've got and they actually enjoy and benefit from it. Moreover, from observation it seems like some boys who are "problems" in cub packs just need to get matched up with adult leaders who know how to handle them. I am thinking of the boy I mentioned in my last post, who joined our pack after being "uninvited" from another. The leader of that other pack actually went out of his way to tell us how awful this boy is, warned us against allowing him to join our pack, and referred to him, in earshot of other people, as a "piece of ****." Not surprisingly, this boy, who I agree is hard to handle anyway, did NOT respond well to that kind of "leadership." In fact from my observation of that pack, it seemed like this boy and the leader fed off of each other's aggression, to the detriment of all. We're not psychologists and there are times when we won't be able to get through to a boy. So yes, if a kid is truly a danger to others, we might have to ask him to leave if we can't find a better way to handle the situation. But I really hesitate to say that, at such a young age in a boy's life, this should be our solution except in very rare instances. Lisa'bob

I find it interesting that so many troops have this problem. Most of the time when we talk about adult participation in scouting we bemoan the lack of it, not the wealth of it! My son's troop charges a camping fee for everyone who attends (leaders, scouts, parents along for the trip, etc.). It is usually somewhere between $10-$15. This is not a deterrent to very many parents. We too often have a better than 1:2 adult:boy ratio at campouts and other events. We too struggle with how to act as a "model patrol" when the adult patrol is so large. Thing is, most of these adults in our case are regular attendees who already ARE registered leaders . In most cases, these folks are not there to keep tabs on their own boys or to "check out" the troop. Their own sons are generally mid-older teens or have aged out. These folks are there because they enjoy it. This is certainly a strength in many ways but like Eagle74, sometimes I wonder if we're running two programs; one for the boys and one for their parents. Which leads me to wonder if in some weird way, we're a victim of our own success! The program is such fun for the adults that THEY don't want to leave. And...does this put additional pressure on the "boy led" concept when this happens? I'm not exactly complaining, mind you. I like the fact that we've got some really knowledgable, experienced adults around. I'm just musing I guess. Lisa'bob

ronvo, We've had UCs do uniform inspections BY INVITATION of unit leaders. They were always done in keeping with the "friendly, courteous, kind" aspects of the scout law too. Done in this way, the UC can be a helper to the adult leaders (or to the youth leaders, in a troop or crew setting). S/he is helping them achieve their goal of using the uniform method. (And I think it is safe to suppose that the unit does have this as a goal, if they've invited the UC to come by for a uniform inspection.) I've never met a UC who simply dropped in un-invited to do uniform inspections and I rather doubt that most unit leaders would look favorably on such a visit. At least not in my neck of the woods. Lisa'bob

Working with "unruly" kids is really tough. Does this young man have any underlying causes for his behavior that might be addressed? (typical causes but by no means the only ones: abusive situations at home, lack of parenting, or medical problems) We've had experiences with difficult scouts at the cub level, including a couple who were forced out of another pack in town and joined ours. Here are some things we found worked pretty well. 1. Make sure you have good communications with the parents. You aren't their replacement by any means but at least while that boy is at scouts, you are partners with the family in helping to teach the boy. Can't do it if you don't have an open line of communication. My experience is that most parents know when their child is a "problem" child because they've had that same experience with school, sports, etc.. Most of them will appreciate your honest effort to work with them for the good of their boy. Especially if it comes across in a caring manner instead of an accusatory one. The only place where this doesn't work is when the parents are the source of "junior's" problems - but that's relatively rare and most of the time those folks aren't going to spend the time, effort, or money getting their kid involved in scouts anyway. 2. If necessary, set up a requirement that a parent/guardian attend all activities with the boy - no drop offs. And get that parent actively involved (maybe as a trained, registered leader even) since they'll be there anyway. 3. In the case of one of the boys who joined our pack after being told not to return to his previous pack: part of the problem stemmed from physical contact (pushing, shoving, etc.) and part of the problem stemmed from the type of authority he responds to in a positive manner. The den leader whose den he joined did two things. She set up clear boundaries for him from the start. And she didn't try to out-bully him, which his previous leaders did (they are big guys and used to using their size and loud voices to get kids to behave). The boy had an incident-free year in our pack and just recently crossed over into the troop my son is in. So far, so good. Sometimes you just need to use a different approach until you find one that works. You may well have lost some scouts and that's a shame. Eamon's right that adult leaders could've stepped in sooner but I know from experience that this does not always happen even though it should. At least you're prepared to deal with it now. In addition to figuring out how to approach the boy who is at the center of the problem, I think you also owe it to the other boys who you know are leaving, to steer them toward another pack in town (if there is one). They probably aren't going to come back to your pack no matter what at this point but that doesn't mean they should quit scouting. Give their parents all the contact info you can gather for the other packs and offer to be a contact person yourself, to help parents find a suitable pack for their boys in the fall. Make sure that you talk this over with your CC and CM so it doesn't appear you are going "behind their backs" and syphoning off members from your own pack though. Good luck and here's hoping for a smooth last meeting for your pack. Lisa'bob

We recently decided on a similar policy for all drivers (anybody who wants to drive children that are not their own should be a registered leader). Up until now, we've only required a current license, registration, and insurance information for drivers. THis is in part due to concerns about insurance but also due to the fact that some members felt the BSA was better equipped to do background checks on people than we are. It has come to light that a few folks who DO have vehicle insurance, registrations, and licenses, none the less are probably NOT in any position to be driving other people's children anywhere. This spilled over into a conversation about possibly requiring all adults on campouts to be registered leaders too and that was nixed as being too restrictive. In reality, the majority of adults who are likely to be driving and attending campouts anyway are already registered as troop leaders so it I don't think it will have a whole lot of impact on day-to-day operations. Lisa'bob

We used to do it with our pack but for some reason the troops in the area aren't interested. I can't understand why. (Actually I can but I just don't agree...) So no, we didn't do it with the troop this year. It is a pretty nice little service project - easy to do for cubs and certainly helpful to the community. I'm glad you were able to be part of it. Lisa'bob

I will suggest that this be brought up at a PLC and let you know what the result is. Unfortunately I doubt it will happen because this is one area where "boy led" tends not to occur; most of the well-established adult leaders in the troop are of the opinion that fundraising and service projects should be arranged by the adults. But I'll bring it up and give it a try. Lisa'bob

Kaji, I have to disagree. I have seen both wood and aluminum tracks with exactly the problem that you described. I have also seen both types of tracks without this problem. In fact I routinely use data from a couple of tracks (one wood, one aluminum) as examples in my statistics courses, to teach students how to determine if there are true differences in car speed, depending on which lane a given car is assigned to race in. The best way we found to avoid this problem (regardless of the track)is to run each car in every lane so that nobody can claim that they got a bum deal due to the lane they were assigned. Lisa'bob

Kittle, I was a WDL and now I'm on the committee for my son's troop. That's obviously not the same as being an ASM, I know, but still... I liked being a WDL best. We had a really great group of boys and parents to work with. It can become exhausting though. I can't imagine doing that job with a group of "difficult" boys/parents as you have described in previous posts. I guess, if you aren't enjoying it, that should be the big signal that it is time to try something different. Being involved in the troop can be exhausting too, just in different ways (grin). If the troop needs additional ASM support, great, there might be a role for you. What about their troop committee? They might also need some help there so don't exclude those possible jobs. Whatever you end up with, be willing to give it a try for a bit to adjust, but if you aren't enjoying it after a while, don't hesitate to speak up and to try something else instead! Given your continued ties to the pack, maybe you'd be a great person to head up the troop's webelos-scout transition program for the next year or two? Or help coordinate scouting for food, or whatever other joint projects the troop and pack do together? Good luck finding a happy niche! Lisa'bob

We did a fundraiser the other day that entailed staffing a non-profit recycling center, sorting the stuff people brought in to the center into appropriate bins and where possible, breaking down or compacting those items. In return we received a third of the center's gate receipts (they charge a minimal fee for their service) for the day plus any returnable bottles/cans. In terms of work hours: we had 8 people at this event, each working 4 hours, plus the time it takes to return the pop bottles, most of which were unusual brands so we have to hunt down stores that will accept them. The boys - esp. the younger ones - had a great time working at the center (who knew stomping on plastic milk cartons could be so exciting!) and everybody is willing to do it again in the future even though we were all cold, wet, and dirty by the end (this occurs outside and the weather was unpleasant). Grand total we made about $40 for the troop. I appreciate that money is money and so on, but I'm almost thinking that it isn't worth it to do this event as a fundraiser. Our troop does have several other fundraisers each year that are much more successful and while there are always excellent uses for the money, we're not desperate for cash either. I'm thinking of suggesting to our committee that we continue to participate in the future, but as a troop service project instead. The advantages I see to counting it as service instead are that a) the boys could use an apparently fun service project toward rank advancement, and b) it sets up a different mind-set. Working that hard for money and then getting such a small return is a bit disappointing; working that hard for service to others almost seems better. What do you all think? Lisa'bob

Personally I like the wood track. It's a pine WOOD derby, eh? But I really don't think it matters much to the kids one way or the other. By all means, get the timer if you don't already have one. Speaking from experience (running races with and without a timer), that's the most important tool in terms of placating hyper-involved parents who are just "sure" that their son's car came in first by a hair's breadth. Also yeah, the kids like them. Lisa'bob

I agree whole heartedly with Eagle-pete's point about the TG being a guide and not an enforcer. While I had a portfolio that I shared with my TG, that was my choice and it was part of my answer to the question of "how will this be verified?". I'm a bit compulsive about keeping written records so that's what worked for me. It helped me to evaluate the effectiveness and meaning of my ticket items for myself and my unit, and Eagle-Pete's right, that's ultimately what mattered. Dancin - can you tell me where and when C-12-06 will be held? I'm in the same region and looking to promote WB to a few adult leaders, and our council isn't running the course this year. Feel free to PM me if you prefer. Thanks - Lisa'bob

I tend to agree with Barry here. Get the parent(s) on board as much as possible but don't demand to speak w/ the boy's doctor. If the parents offer that, fine, but the parents would be my first line of information and they should know enough about their son's condition to explain any medical concerns themselves. Autism is not an excuse for this scout to bully others, or to be bullied by other scouts either. There are lots of people here with more experience than me (and this is where having open communications with the boy's parents will be important) but often it seems to help with autism-spectrum situations to lay out very clear steps in terms of behavior that are definitely do-able for the boy. The boy's parent (and maybe the boy himself too) ought to be able to help you figure out what those would be for his particular case. Lisa'bob

It depends on the ticket too. Several of mine included written documents of some kind and others were activities where I had photos of the events. I kept a portfolio that I shared w/ my TG on an occasional basis. We also had a brief meeting when all items were done, in which we went through the whole portfolio together. Although I'm pretty sure he'd have been ok w/ "scout's honor" too, if there were some reason we couldn't have met face to face. Lisa'bob